9/11 Law Enforcement Privacy

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MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD

Event:

Type of Event: Intervie~·Of ..I ..

~uperviSOry Language Specialist)

\, \. Date: October 1, 2003

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\. Sp,eCial Access Issues: None

\ Prep.!lfed by: Michael Jacobson

Team 'i!~mber: 6

Location'. FBI, Miami Field Office

~\Participants'Non-Cornmission: Assistant General Counsel Sean O'Neill

\'fartiCipants ~"Commission: Chris Healey and Michael Jacobson

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• S~~ has lived in ~epominican Repub::::~:U::ain. Her dad was in the military. She
was'a house wife before becoming an LS. She worked as an LS for some time, before
being promoted to SLS~. As an LS, she was doing primarily drug work, mostly
Co IU11:1bian. She was working on translating tapes, looking at documents, and
participating in interviews. She had not worked CT prior to 9111 only eI She has
worked ..,both FISAs and ~it1.~ 3S' 9/11 Classified Information
They are CT cases she thinks. 1.

\' CO;;'I!OSitfon and work of her unit

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supervises the Spani~",LSS. Before 9/11, they were working mostly drugs
and health care fraud. Now half of them are working national security type issues and the
other half ar~ working other matters. \She is currently supervising 16 LSs and 8 contract
linguists. They have 2 language units 'i~ Miami: 1 is responsible for Spanish and one is
for languages ~th~r th~n Spanish. Thei~ave one ,Arabic LS and one Italian LS, an~ the
rest are contra1Im&!!ISY- We should aslil .labout these other personnel. She IS a
GS-13 and so i The LSs report to the Administrative Officer. .

She's losing some contract linguists. 1 went to translate for the court, and another
to work for customs, because they had no medical benefits as FBI contractors. She will

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write ~Q about this, but she thinks that any new spots will go to Arabic .

Career Track for LSs

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• There is no career track for contractors. The LSs,come in at a GS-7 and can go to
a 13. They have 5 GS': 13s among the LSs in Miami. The''I~lian and Arabic LSs, and 3
others. To get the 9S-13, they have to submit work exemplars, They have been show
documents they'vetranslated and to submit KSAs. One board will.review the KSAs and
one will review their exemplars. These are reviewed at HQ. It is not-an easy process,
and it's getting-longer. It takes about 6 months. Now the process is: theysubmit
exemplars, ~d once they are approved, they submit KSAs. When she was'app.l~r
her GS-13~:she was able to submit them jointly. Appeals of denials would go 1<1-..J
I' !at HQ. HQ devises the criteria policy. They give the field lots of leeway for
the actual translation.

Quality control

HQ has been trying to standardize the format of translations. They want the field
to implement quality control. In Miami, they have implemented this system.
She made it so all of the contract linguists have their work reviewed. If there are too
many mistakes, their work will be continually reviewed until the person can fly solo. She
is having experienced people review others' work.

For the translations for court, they will mark them as "draft" and send them to the

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agents. If the to be used in court the will have a OS-13 review it before it
oes to court .
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Hiring

Hiring is handled by HQ. It used to be handled locally, but now it's handled
through the Internet, which HQ controls. This is true with both contractors and LSs.
They need HQ approval to hire either contractors or LSs.

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Access to databases and intelligence communitv information

The LSs don't have ACS. There is no need for this. She doesn't have a need.
She has FBINET which has the FBI intranet. They don't have any intelligence
community databases. They also don't receive any intelligence community reporting or
analytic products. They don't work with the analysts. They basically just deal directly
with the case agents.

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Training

As far as trainingJ ~as a CD Rom with information. That's it for them.

They do get minimization briefings and have to sign these forms. They get a legal
briefing on T3s once a year, which is given by one of the legal advisors. There is training
at Quantico as well. I
i Recommendations

If she had a magic wand, she would have more linguists, and wishes she could

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raise the pay and offer benefits to! the contract linguists. She would like them to be
permanent employees as well.

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